The default installation of cadcVOFS is tuned for accessing theVOSpace provided by the Canadian Astronomy Data Centrehttp://www.cadc.hia.nrc.gc.ca/vospace

VOSpace is a Distrbuted Cloud storage service for use in Astronomy.

There are three ways to use cadcVOFS:

1) access VOSpace from the command-line

2) make VOSpace appear as mounted filesystem

3) use the vos module inside a Python script

All of these methods require the user to have a pre-existing VOSpaceaccount with the CADC.

Authentication to the CADC VOSpace service is performed using securitycertificates which are managed by the CADC Group Management Service(GMS). The certificates can be retrieved from the CADC using the'getCert' script and users CADC account and password information.

retrieves a certificate from the CADC servers, these certifcates are valid for 2 days (be default) but can be valid for upto 30 days (see the getCert help). The cerificate is stored in ${HOME}/.ssl by default.

3a) For filesystem usage:

> mountvofs

mounts the CADC VOSpace root Container Node at /tmp/vospace and initiates a 5GB cache in the users home directory (${HOME}/vos_)

**** Since the VOSpace does not have a mapping of your unix users IDs all files appear to be owned by the user who issued the 'mountvofs' command. Only that user can see the mount point.

3b) Commandline usage:

> vls -l vos:

Lists the contents of the CADC root VOSpace Container Node.

> vcp vos:jkavelaars/test.txt ./

copys the files 'test.txt' from the the vospace container jkavelaars to your local directory.